Читать книгу: «The Furies»

The strange thing, they said, wringing their hands and whispering as though we couldn’t hear, or weren’t listening through extension phones or cracks in the walls, was that there was no known cause of death.

Inconclusive, they said, as though that changed the fact of it, which was this: a sixteen-year-old girl, dead on school property, without a single clue to suggest why or how. No unexplained prints on the body, the forensic examination finding no trace of violence, nor rape, nor a single fibre that could not be linked to the girl, her friends, or her mother, whom she had hugged for the last time that morning as she left for school. It was as though her heart had simply stopped, her blood stilled in her veins, preserving her forever in a single moment, watchful as the dawn.

The papers blurred it out, took suggestive photographs of the screen the police erected around the scene, an implicit acknowledgement of the horrors that lay within. But by that time, I’d already seen it. I see it now, sometimes, when I’m struggling to sleep. It’s etched there, in my mind, not because it was horrific, nor due to some long-standing, unresolved trauma. No, my feeling is quite the opposite: a thrill, cold and sweet, in the recall.

I think of the scene, now, because it was so perfectly composed, like a Renaissance painting, the girl’s neck angled slightly, like La Pietà, though I did not see that, then. It was over a decade later, on a tour of the Vatican, that I first realized the likeness. My students, for obvious reasons, thought that my solitary teardrop as I explained the history of the sculpture belied some exquisite taste on my part, a visceral response to the beauty of Michelangelo’s work; I did nothing to disabuse them of that notion.

She was beautiful when she was alive – a child just discovering her power, knowing herself, all collarbones and blooming flesh – but death, it must be said, gave her something of the sublime. A little like the poem, ‘La Gioconda’ by Michael Field: ‘Historic, side-long, implicating eyes; / A smile of velvet’s lustre on the cheek; / Calm lips the smile leads upward; hand that lies / Glowing and soft, the patience in its rest / Of cruelty that waits and doth not seek / For prey …’ An underrated duo to my mind. How I love those words, even now.

In this pose they found her, eyes open, sitting upright on a swing. Immaculately put together, alive but for the blue threads of deoxygenated blood in place of youth’s blush; the impossibly delicate silver threads that tied her hands to the chains, the stiffness of her back, the result of rigor mortis, by the time she was found on the still gently rocking swing. Feet crossed at the ankles, ladylike, though one of her shoes had fallen to the ground below. All this, in a thin, white dress, turned almost see-through by the morning dew. A modern masterpiece, precise and profound.

‘So tragic,’ they said. ‘Another angel taken home,’ written on cards taped to store-bought bouquets, ink dripping in the rain. In the markets, beet farmers and fishermen muttered under their breaths; the local newspapers – whose usual focus was limited to the town’s growing seagull population and the many, endless failures of the one-way system – were filled with photos of her for weeks, her school photo tacked on their banner, ‘Never Forget’, in an incongruously jaunty font beneath. The news reporters – the real reporters, national, international, such was the allure of the image – lurked among the townspeople for weeks, listening for hushed conversations, searching for clues. Hotels saw a dramatic uplift in room occupancy; restaurateurs joked grimly that death should visit more often. That it had been, by all accounts, a very good year.

‘Every possible measure will be taken to get to the bottom of this case, and to prevent anything like this happening in our community again,’ the police chief said, chest puffed, parading peacock-like for the camera. I watched it with my mother, first, and then years later, at home, alone, after an unknown voyeur uploaded it online, grainy in a way that echoed the great tragedies of the TV era. Something about it reminded me of a video I’d found of the Kennedy shooting, the solemn delivery, the echo of the head thrown back. ‘We will investigate every angle, every lead, and every person in contact with this young lady to ascertain the exact circumstances leading up to her tragic death,’ he said.

They didn’t, of course. They ruled out the usual suspects – boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, a deranged parent – all to no avail. Even now, if you search for her name, you’ll find amateur sleuths on message boards posting their own theories – sometimes unhinged, sometimes surprisingly accurate. In the small hours of the night curiosity leads me there, when the darkness falls heavy and my need to see her swells. I’m grateful to the voyeurs of the internet, to the stranger who uploaded the crime scene photos, decades after the fact. They turn my nerves electric, the memory radiating white hot, clear.

For, despite all that followed – the investigation, the questions, the on-camera tears and plaintive words wailed at drooling reporters – even after all these years, I struggle with this one, unspeakable truth: I don’t feel bad about what we did. Any of it. Somehow, I can’t. It’s a crime, of course, and the fear of retribution naturally haunts me. But still, guilt is not the feeling I associate with her death.

Because, in the year I knew her, and in all the events leading up to her death – her murder – I felt more alive than I ever have, before or since. ‘To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame—’ a quote I repeat to my students regularly, though it never seems to capture their imaginations as it did ours – that, Pater said, is success in life. And in the memory of her, I feel that flame burn, hard and bright.

We were close to the divine. We touched gods, felt them flow through our veins. Felt lust, envy, greed, quicken our hearts – but for a while, we were truly, spectacularly alive. It might have been any of us, sitting there like the Madonna on the gently rocking swing. Sheer luck made it her, not me.

Autumn

Chapter 1

Visitors joked that it was the kind of place people came to die. A town at the end of the world, at the end of the century: the absolute end of the line.

The population ageing, sick and tired: the remains of the old brickworks hollowed by the wind. A little south, a well-known suicide spot, white cliffs that drew the despairing up and then over into the cool, grey sea. Train tracks that stopped abruptly, roads that led to no place but here … These were the obvious signs, I suppose: the root of the joke. But it wasn’t just that.

It was the rain-battered shop fronts with peeling signs; pavilions caked in bird-shit and graffiti. The grey beaches, equal parts sand and shards of glass, crumpled beer cans and plastic bags. The arcades on the promenade, Caesar’s Palace, Golden Ticket, Lucky Strike, carpets damp with beer and bleach, copper coins rattling on tin; men smoking in the fruit machines’ lurid glow, hypnotized by the roll and ring. The pale fields of burned grass, barbed wire and brick. The shipping yards, great metal tombs arranged by mechanical beasts; the wilful, leering stench of the fish market. The corrugated bomb shelters, the stone mermaid, face worn away by the wind.

This is where I spent my youth, and found myself fixed, like a figure painted in oils; decay still rolling on, the shore dragged away by the sea. One day it will all be gone, and the world will be better for it.

There is little to tell of the years before I turned fifteen, my childhood quiet and dull, days and years blurring without consequences. My mum stayed home, taught me to read, watched me grow; my dad ran a small shop which, as far as I could tell, sold everything. I would hide in the cool, dark storerooms, plucking neon pens and glittering pencil sharpeners from scratched plastic trays and damp cardboard boxes. Board games, tested by me, playing my shadow. Books read, carefully, spines unbroken, pages held lightly as ancient runes. It sounds lonely, I imagine, but it was a comfort.

When I was eight, Mum said we’d been blessed with a special Christmas gift, and rubbed her swollen belly. I went to the encyclopaedia. Imagined her insides stretching, fists clutching tendons, amniotic sac bursting, tiny fingers crawling out. It’s one of the only Christmases I remember now, as an adult.

It was a girl. A writhing, red-faced, screaming girl with a mass of black hair and cold, grey eyes. She was possessed, her whole life, with a look that suggested she knew more than she let on, little keeper of secrets. She was seven when Dad’s car slipped under the wheels of a truck as he drove us to the beach. He died instantly, she lingering for four days, though she barely looked like herself. Barely looked like a person at all, really, her skin mottled blue, wet stitches carved into her skull.

I, for my part, climbed out of the car, a smudge of blood on my arm (not mine), plucked a damp fragment of bone from my hair (nor this). Brushed away the frost of glass that clung to my skin. Walked away, feeling like I’d woken from a long, dull, dream.

And that, I suppose, was the end. Or the beginning, depending on how you look at it.

Their lives ended, and Mum’s life stopped. Even decades later, when I returned to clean the house after her death, everything remained as it was that day. Wallpaper greying, carpets scorched with wear. The same books on the shelves, same VHS tapes unboxed under the old TV, still emitting a low, static hum. Same tie hanging in a loose knot on the bedroom door, same crumpled papers in the bin, the same last words abandoned mid-sentence on a yellowing page.

‘Perhaps we might consider an alternative approach,’ my dad’s last recorded thought in smudged, black ink. Everything was placed there with memories attached, my dad’s fingerprints and sister’s laugh still covering everything, like a skin that wouldn’t shed.

I, however, felt nothing. Leaving the hospital, nothing; throwing a clod of damp soil into the pit, soft thump on varnished pine, nothing. Mum weeping on the sofa, clawing at my hair, pressing damp, hot palms to my face, clinging to my life: still, nothing.

Weeks later, I woke on the sofa to find her staring at me as one might take in a half-expected ghost, lip bitten to the jelly beneath. ‘I thought she was … I thought you were gone too,’ she said, her eyes wet with tears, pointing at a face on the screen that looked like mine, but for the details. Hair dull blonde, hers shining, mine textured, split, like old rope; eyes close as one might find to black, but for a chink of amber in her left iris; lips round, always a little too full for lipstick, which gave me the distinct look of a circus clown. Mine were chipped and ridged white with medicinal balm, a compulsive picking I couldn’t shake, hers blush pink, smooth and smiling to reveal white, un-chipped teeth. I thought, watching her face flicker on the screen, that she was a better version of me – the one I longed to be. The artist’s ideal, brush softly smoothing my faults, delicate touch between the lines.

‘Renewed concerns for the missing teenager Emily Frost, who disappeared exactly one month ago today. Her whereabouts remain unknown, and her family have issued a new appeal for any information relating to her disappearance.’

I watched the stock footage, the familiar cliffs, the too-familiar edge. Nobody bothered to count the suicides these days. Emily had last been seen walking there, at the highest point.

‘Mum, I’m here. That isn’t me. She’s just a jumper,’ I said, reaching for the remote. ‘They always are.’

‘We just want you to come home,’ her dad said, staring down the lens. ‘We miss you, Emily. Please, please come home.’

I changed the channel and went back to sleep.

If there can be said to be an up-side to miraculously surviving a car wreck, apart from the immediately obvious, it’s that nobody expects you to go to school.

‘Not until you’re ready,’ Mum said. The therapist nodded sagely behind, a cornflake stuck to his moustache, a fat fingerprint smudge on his glasses. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Just take your time.’

And so I did. I took my time: skipped school right through to my final exams, declaring myself ‘home-schooled’. I sat in a silent hall, surrounded by people I knew, my former classmates whispering as I walked in and right out again: ‘I thought she was dead,’ one said, pointing at me with a bloody, bitten nail.

I had already planned my future, or at least, had drawn a basic sketch. I would leave – though where to, I wasn’t sure. I’d get a job. A waitress in a quiet café, where interesting visitors would tell me thrilling lies. A bookshop clerk, offering new worlds to bored children; an assistant in a gallery, maybe. I could learn to sing, or play guitar. I could write a book, life ticking quietly along around me. It wouldn’t be glamorous, sure, but it would be enough. Anywhere, really, would be better than here, this town in which the greys of the old houses, sky and sea seeped into your heart and turned irreparably it black.

But on the day of my results, I came home to find Mum at the kitchen table, papers clenched in white-knuckled fists. ‘It’s what they would’ve wanted,’ she said, handing me the entry forms for Elm Hollow Academy – a private girls’ college on the outskirts of town. ‘It’s a privilege,’ she said: one afforded to me by the unspeakably large settlement offered by the haulage company under whose articulated truck our car had been crushed.

School, to me, was all taped-up windows, boxy buildings cracking at the edges, grey even in sunlight; freezing portacabins, graffitied bathroom mirrors and the loamy stink of teenage sweat. ‘I don’t want to,’ I said, and left.

She didn’t argue. But the papers sat on the kitchen table for weeks, and each time I passed I found myself drawn to the glossy pictures on the cover of the brochure: looming, red-brick buildings set against a too-blue sky, sunlight needling through pearly clouds behind a Gothic arch. There was a decadent, honey-sweet richness to it – one that I knew wasn’t for me, but seemed, in the flickering kitchen light, the stifling damp in the air, to be another world entirely.

And so – reluctantly, at least as far as my mum was concerned – I agreed to give it a try. Our dilapidated Volvo purred behind me at the gates, and I turned to wave her away, though she – thinking herself unobserved – was staring down at the steering wheel, grin a steely rictus beneath strings of dirty hair. I winced, and turned away, catching the eye of a passing girl watching, embarrassed for us both.

I walked towards the school quickly, looking up at the looming clock tower – the Campanile, I would soon be corrected, inspired by the reds and creamy whites of Tuscan cousins, gleaming in sunlight – and dipped under the arches, into the main building. Students gathered on the steps in clusters, whispering.

I passed wholly unnoticed, and told a stout, grey-haired woman – Boturismo made flesh – my name three times. She stared at me, blankly, through the glass partition, muddy with prints and unsettling scratches. Without a word, she slid a sheaf of papers through the gap and pointed to a row of seats. As I sat staring numbly at the endless list of extra-curricular activities and advanced classes, none of which I had any interest in taking, a girl loped by, hair bottle-red, ladders torn artfully into her tights. She waved with two fingers and smiled, a rolled-up cigarette teetering on the edge of her lip. I stared until the last second before she disappeared into the crowd, when I at last mustered a weak, lost smile.

She must’ve been smiling at somebody else, I thought. But as I looked around, back to the wall, this seemed unlikely. I sat, dazed, among the marble busts and gloomy portraits of long-dead headmasters until the bell rang, and the crowd dispersed. I waited, peering down the empty corridors, wondering whether I might have been forgotten.

A door creaked behind; I heard my name, and stood. The man in the doorway was tall, though not imposingly so, a little pot-bellied; tweed and sweater, horn-rimmed glasses; skin possessed of the waxy paleness common to those who spend too much time indoors. He stared at me, blinked, coughed; held out a hand, fingers clubbed and ink-stained. ‘Come on in,’ he said, softly.

He moved a stack of books and spilled papers from a wide, worn armchair next to the desk and I took a seat. The office was warm, if a little stuffy, books piled high under sediment layers of dust, framed prints of medieval etchings covering the walls. ‘Cup of tea?’ he said. Caught staring, I shook my head and picked at a loose thread on my folder.

‘So, let me begin with my usual spiel, and then we’ll get to know each other,’ he said, taking a seat by the desk and leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He took a deep breath: tang of stale coffee on it, sour.

‘On behalf of the faculty of Elm Hollow, I’d like to welcome you to our student population.’ He paused, smiling. ‘We’re a small school with a varied and prestigious history, and we’re proud to have among our alumni leaders across a range of disciplines, including the sciences and the arts.’ There was a brief pause as he waited for me to respond; I nodded, and he went on, his smile the kind one might offer to a well-trained dog.

‘Our teaching staff includes many of these professionals, and our students are given the opportunity to follow in their footsteps with a wide array of curriculum-based and vocational courses. My name is Matthew Holmsworth, and I’m the Dean of Students here at Elm Hollow. I teach among the Medieval History faculty, primarily, but I’m also responsible for ensuring welfare among the student body, and, of course, welcoming new students such as yourself. You can call me Matthew – though I’d suggest calling the rest of the faculty Dr Whatever-Their-Name-Is until you’ve reached that level of informality, though, to be quite honest, that isn’t likely to happen with all of them … I, however, prefer to be called Matthew.’

He paused, drew breath, and smiled again. I looked away. In the weeks and months after the crash, I’d become somewhat accustomed to people looking at me like this, the ‘tragic miracle’ look, as though the fact of me confused them. I found it nauseating. ‘So what brings you here, Violet?’ he asked, though judging by this look, he already knew.

‘I need to get my A-Levels,’ I said, flatly, voice little more than a croak.

‘Great. That’s great. I’m told you were self-taught last year – is that right?’ I heard the creak of his chair as he leaned farther forward, and looked up.

‘Yeah. I … Yeah.’

‘That’s a very impressive achievement. You must be quite proud.’ I nodded. He looked down at my file, and almost imperceptibly raised his brow. I knew, for all my teenage claims of apathy that I’d done well; better, certainly, than anyone had expected. ‘Well, I can see you’ve got an interest in the arts,’ he continued, apparently choosing not to comment. I blushed at having expected more, a knot of shame coiling, sharp.

‘We have an outstanding arts faculty – our English programme is second to none, and most of our Music students go on to spectacular things at various conservatoires here and in Europe, so both of those would be solid choices. You might also consider one of our Fine Art courses, too – Annabel is highly selective, but I’d be happy to recommend she review your transcripts, if you’re interested …’

As he spoke, he ran a finger absent-mindedly over the glass of a framed etching lying on the desk. I followed the path, black ink on creamy paper: a woman tied at the stake, staring into the eyes of some great hulking beast with curling, twisted horns and broad wings. Behind her, three ghouls, arms reaching for her neck.

A silence fell. I realized he was waiting for a response. ‘That sounds … Great.’

‘Super,’ he said, with all the brightness of a department store Father Christmas. ‘And do you have any questions for me?’

‘Can I have a look at that?’ I said, reaching for the picture. I caught myself and pulled my hand away.

‘This? Well, of course.’ He paused. ‘It only arrived this morning. I’ve been wanting to procure a copy since I joined the faculty.’ He handed me the frame, and I placed it on my lap, leaning in to examine the beast’s feathers and scales, his mad, wild eyes, his used-car salesman smile. The flames curled up and around the woman’s feet, rising to meet the hair that fell long down her back. ‘Margaret Boucher,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I suppose you’ve heard the history of Elm Hollow, haven’t you?’

I looked up. ‘I’ve read the prospectus.’

‘Oh, no. The prospectus is the sales brochure. Accurate, of course,’ he said, with a wry smile. ‘But it’s the rather sanitised version. Most of the faculty are drawn to this place for one reason or another from our school’s history – it’s tempting ground for the academic.’ He lowered his voice, a confidential whisper. ‘My interests, for instance, lie in the witch trials that took place on the grounds in the seventeenth century. Quite possibly in this very spot where we’re sitting now.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Oh, quite serious, yes. The wych elm you passed on your way in marks the spot where she was burned.’ I stared at him, but he went on, cheerfully. ‘It was believed – though I’d stress that this is medieval belief, not fact – that this was fertile ground for all kinds of sorcery. Many well-known folk myths originated here, though the references to Elm Hollow have faded away with time. A very good PR job on the school’s behalf, I think.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. It was a real frenzy, for a time. And occasionally, so they say, since – though that’s not really my area, being a medievalist and all. Still, it’s not uncommon for curious guests to arrive on the grounds, seeking an audience with the Devil himself.’ He chuckled, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Instead, they meet Mrs Coxon on reception, and they don’t seem to hang around long after that.’

He let out a sudden cough, as though catching himself. ‘Anyway – this piece is one I’ve been trying to procure for quite some time. A copy, mind, but a very good one. But don’t worry,’ he said, with a smile. ‘It’s not all devils and roaming beasts around here, at least as far as I’m aware. Let’s get your timetable sorted and find out what the future has in store for you.’

I left the office clutching an oddly sparse timetable. ‘We expect our students to fill these free hours with pursuits which will help them to become well-rounded young women,’ the Dean had said as I stared down at it, confused.

I’d enrolled in both the practical Visual Arts class, and Aesthetics, a more theoretical module – as well as English Literature and Classics, a subject not offered at my previous school, but which I’d loved as a child, when Dad would fill my mind with tales of Medusas and Minotaurs as I drifted into sleep. I had taken the maximum four courses students were permitted to study, and wondered what I’d do with all that spare time; imagined myself friendless, hiding behind books.

The corridor stretching towards the English department – a class for which I was by now a good twenty minutes late – was an area where the school showed its age, though it seemed still to possess a shabby dignity, an almost sombre blankness, as though pulled from another time.

Gone were the sex-ed pamphlets in wire racks, the sugar paper displays in childish lettering; gone were the painted breeze-blocks and papier-mâché displays, the keyed lockers and scuffed linoleum floors. Instead, I walked a warm, low-ceilinged corridor with step-worn carpets, passing wooden doors with office hours taped beneath each tutor’s name.

It was far too warm for September – but the heating, I would soon discover, was turned on only from September to Christmas, leaving us to spend the first few months of the academic year sweating through our shirts, the second peering at teachers through the mist of our breaths.

Finding the class, I was uncomfortably aware of a thin sheen of sweat on my brow, jumper stuck grimly to the skin under my backpack. I knocked on the door, and peered inside.

The students stared at me, eyes assessing, judging my place in the natural order. I gripped the door a little tighter, fingers turning red, then white. The tutor – Professor Malcolm, the only tutor I have encountered before or since who insisted on such a title, though with what qualification I am still yet to find out – was a squat, balding man with oddly tiny features, a button nose top-and-tailed by thin lips and black, bird-like eyes.

‘I’m … I’m new,’ I said, nervously.

‘Well, sit then. And try to learn something.’ He turned back to the board, resuming his talk, as I shuffled between the rows and took a seat. I tried to catch up, glancing at the open books and scrawled notes on the desks beside me. ‘And, as Blake concludes, “Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.” What do we think this means?’

Met with silence, he sighed. I raised my hand. He sighed again. ‘Yes?’

‘… Blake finds morality and religion too … Too restrictive. He thinks it goes against the spirit of man.’ I blushed, furiously, realizing as I spoke what I’d done. The silence was cool, relentless – one of the many weapons, I would learn, that the students of Elm Hollow possessed.

He paused. ‘And you are?’

‘Violet,’ I whispered, my betrayal hanging heavy on the air.

He cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Excuse me?’

‘My name is Violet,’ I said again, a little louder: a croak.

He nodded, and went on, as I shrank into my chair.

‘Man is a wild and occasionally savage, sexual thing,’ he said, affecting his previous drone which seemed designed to counteract the content of his words, the emphasis falling always on the wrong beat. I looked around, surprised at the absence of titters or comments in response to the mention of sex, but the class was silent. Only then did I see the girl from before – the girl with the bright, red hair – three seats away, staring back.